Tuesday, October 21, 2008

It looks like the person we’ve all come to know as Christine Daniels is de-transitioning, and has returned to work as Mike Penner.

Kevin Roderick of highly-respected LAObserved.com reports late Monday that “Eighteen month after writing a column about becoming Christine Daniels, veteran sportswriter Mike Penner has quietly returned to work at the Los Angeles Times, according to multiple sources close to the LAT’s Sports staff.”

If anyone has more information, let me know. As far as I know, this is the most famous person to de-transition I’ve ever heard of, and it’s surely going to cause additional confusion to people who are just starting to get why people transition in the first place.

So - why do people de-transition? I’ve met people who did because they couldn’t find a job as a female, especially if/when there were dependents in the picture. Others realize they weren’t transsexual - and that is the point of RLT, after all, & that means it’s working. Any other reasons people have come across?

1 comment:

regarding people de-transitioning: I've heard lots of stories about people who had problems finding employment or who just became socially exhausted (for lack of a better phrase) of constantly having to deal with other people being uncomfortable or dismissive or disturbed or etc. over their apparent gender incongruity. This might apply to Mike/Christine - especially being a sports writer for a mainstream paper.

I've also known a couple of trans people who had made previous attempts at transitioning, but who got too scared or overwhelmed and decided to revert back (for a while, at least).

I've also met a number of people who genuinely realized after the fact that transitioning was not the right choice for them. to be honest, I was skeptical to believe this at first, as it so conflicts with my own personal experience as someone who avoided transitioning for many many years, and who was felt a million times better post-transition. but such people do exist.

I am not going to suggest that Mike/Christine de-transitioned because ze was not a "real" transsexual. But I do think that with the increase in numbers of people transitioning in the last five years that we in the trans community should be prepared to thoughtfully answer questions on this subject. This is especially hard because people will want to use instances of de-transitioning to limit access to transitioning or to imply that we are merely deluded. Sadly, I find that there has been little to no dialog on this subject within trans communities rather worrisome...